Just picking up on a couple of things from yesterday’s post:-

Ministers and crucifixes: I wonder what will happen when Spain, as in Britain and France, has a Muslim appointee.

Two year estimates: I forgot to mention that this is also the predicted time frame for the car park project which has obliterated the square in front of Pontevedra’s town hall. We will see.

The roundabout with the useless side: I imagine this will become a car parking space. Illegal, of course. Spanish urban nature abhors a tarmaced vacuum.

I wonder what the odds are on hearing within 10 minutes 1. A BBC podcast on corruption and organised crime in Bulgaria, and 2. A plea from the ex President of the Galician Xunta that some election or other – presumably Rajoy’s – is not done a la búlgara. Friends tell me this description is applied to elections in which a candidate gets 100% of the vote. Something which President Mugabe is trying to achieve retrospectively, it seems. Perhaps he has Bulgarian advisers.

There is some sort of ‘water war’ taking place between Cataluña, Murcia, Valencia and Madrid. This is about government plans to pipe Ebro water to Barcelona, despite its opposition to its predecessor’s plans to send [rather more] liquid to the south of the country. Needless to say, whatever the core issue is, it's overlain with considerations of, firstly, the centre v. the regions and, secondly, the PSOE v. the PP. I imagine the only thing agreed on by most participants is that everything is the fault of incompetent, thieving, Castilian bastards in Madrid. It’s at times like this that I’m reminded that the solidarity and cohesion so lauded by Spain when it comes to EU funds simply evaporate when domestic issues are on the table.

Galicia Facts

We have two international triathlon races in Pontevedra today and the Weather Gods have decided to take the piss. Temperatures have dropped considerably and the rain is bucketing down. I imagine the event’s spectatorship will be around nil. Poor buggers. But at least they’re professional and so are getting paid for suffering.

Carrefour: Well, something must have worked. They called this morning to say they’re going to give me a new printer. But, No, I can’t pick it up with proof of my identity; I have to first get the receipt they gave to my friend who delivered it to them after I’d left for the UK. Actually, I lied about them calling me; of course they didn’t. Nonetheless, I have temporarily suspended the cif4c.com web page. But it will be resurrected if I find that my old printer is in a new box . . .